This is the second-to-last day of our theme week on Strange Festivals Around the World. So far we’ve talked about festivals in Japan, Spain, and the UK, so I thought we should talk about one right here in the U.S. – Frozen Dead Guy Days in Colorado. The festival is in honor of a cryogenically preserved resident of Nederland, Colorado, named Bredo Morstol. How did Bredo wind up in hills of Colorado? It’s a wild story. In 1989, a Norwegian citizen brought the corpse of his recently deceased grandfather (Bredo) to a cryonics facility in California. Bredo was stored in liquid nitrogen there from 1990 to 1993. He was then put on dry ice and moved to Nederland, where his daughter and grandson planned to open a cryonics facility of their own.
However, his grandson was deported for overstaying his visa. His daughter continued to keep him cryogenically frozen in a shed behind her unfinished house. She was later evicted for living in a house with no plumbing or electricity, which violated local ordinances. Concerned about her father thawing out, she spoke with a local reporter, who went to city council. The town quickly passed a municipal code making it illegal to store a frozen human or animal on your property. Luckily for Bredo, he was grandfathered in (see what I did there?) and allowed to stay right there in the shed. The story caused a sensation, as you can imagine. So in honor of Nederland’s unique resident, Frozen Dead Guy Days was started in 2002.
It’s usually held in March, and festivities include coffin races, a hearse parade, “Frozen Dead Guy” lookalike contests, and you can even take a tour of the TuffShed where Grandpa Bredo is still frozen. There has been an increasing interest in the festival, with 25,000 visitors attending in 2019. Last year, it was moved to Estes Park in partnership with the Stanley Hotel (the inspiration behind Steven King’s The Shining). There are plans to move Grandpa Bredo to the Stanley Hotel, where he’ll be kept in the unused ice house on the property. Learn more here.